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Citrix Receiver is a useful cross-platform tool for accessing programs and files on other networks. My university uses Citrix for their desktopAnywhere service but only provides support for MacOS and Windows which is a pain because installing Citrix on Ubuntu is not quite smooth sailing. So here’s a quick guide to cover install and all the hurdles I went through trying to set it up.

1. Download your packages

You can find all the files for Citrix Receiver on the Citrix website in various different flavours. 64 bit packages are at the bottom of the page. Be aware of the file type you’re downloading; Ubuntu users will want to download the .deb files. You can also download the USB Support Package which gives Citrix the ability to read and write from your USB flash drives during a session.

Note: If you’re unsure about which package you need, x86 (32 bit) or x86_64 (64 bit), then run the command uname -i in terminal and you’ll see the arch type of your machine.

OpenMotif is required for the graphical configuration menu of Citrix Receiver but not required for general use so we won’t bother with it for the time being.

2. Installing your packages

Due to a few prompts that may pop up during installation, it’d be best to install through the command line. There’s also a bug that prevents successful installation on 64 bit systems so there’s two ways to go about this.

32 bit: Open the terminal and find where you downloaded the files, for me that was Downloads, and install with dpkg as such:

~$ cd Downloads
~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i icaclient-12.1.0_i386.deb

Use the same command to install the USB support package if you wish to do so.

~$ sudo dpkg -i ctxusb-2.2.0_i386.deb

64 bit: Open the terminal and find where you downloaded the files, for me that was Downloads, and we want to partially install with dpkg as such:

Open your favourite text editor (gedit will do) and find icaclient.postinst in the directory /var/lib/dpkg/info/

~$ sudo gedit /var/lib/dpkg/info/icaclient.postinst

It’s a bit of a long file but you want to find the text near line 2648 that reads

echo $Arch|grep "i[0-9]86" >/dev/null

Replace that line with this

echo $Arch|grep -E "i[0-9]86|x86_64" >/dev/null

Save the file and finally, run this command to configure the package.

~$ sudo dpkg --configure icaclient

ICA client should be installed. Should you wish, you can also take this opportunity to install USB support in the same way by using dpkg -i <filename here>.

3. Supplying authentication certificates.

The Citrix Client does not supply many of it’s own SSL certificates for secure connection authentication, fortunately for Ubuntu users – Firefox does! You can use the following command to copy them over.

Any specific CA certificates that your Citrix admin requires can be placed in that folder too. If you get the error You have not chosen to trust “<name here>“, the issuer of the server’s security certificate. then you’ll need to place the appropriate CA certificate in the /usr/lib/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/ directory.

4. Give it a go!

I’d had a few issues installing the Citrix Receiver onto 64 bit Ubuntu but following those worked for me and… voilà!